lights will guide you home
by thecivilunrest
Summary: I will try to fix you. Dominique/Teddy


**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything.

**A/N: **I don't even know. This is kind of a mess, but whatever. I like it. Please review!

_Lights Will Guide You Home_

When Dominique comes back from Hogwarts after her sixth year he almost doesn't recognize her.

Before where there was a girlish innocence and white there's black ringed around her eyes and on her fingernails, and she's wearing a pair of shorts that are so short and tight it's almost sinful. He doesn't recognize whose arse that is looking so good, until she turns around. Behind all of the black he thinks he sees _her_, _Dominique_, the one from before, but he's not so sure.

"Why _Dominique_," he says, feigning surprise because he'd seen Louis that morning and knew that they had gotten back. "How are things with you?"

"It's Dom," she replies shortly, her lips growing thin as she frowns. She's looking at him as though she hates him, and he can't imagine why.

"But I've never called you Dom," he protests, without thinking about it. And it's true. To everyone else in the Potter-Weasley clan Dominique Gabrielle Weasley was _Dom_, but to him she's always been Dominique. He doesn't really know why it's been that way, either that or he doesn't remember. It's little things like that that remind him that he doesn't really belong in that family-not yet anyway.

"There's a first time for everything," she shoots back, her voice short. He doesn't know why she's like this now, especially to him. She was never like this before.

"Well okay. Fine, _Dom_." He puts emphasis her shortened name, like that makes everything better. "How are you?"

"I'm fan-fucking-tastic," she shoots back, imitating the way that Teddy enunciates his words. He's just happy to see her and his voice shows it, is that so bad? "Now leave me alone."

.x.

Victoire sees his confusion later, at dinner as he looks at _Dom_. She's barely eating her food, mashing each pea with the tines of her fork instead of eating them. Victoire puts a hand on his knee and leans closer to him. "Don't worry about Dom," she whispers in his ear. "She's get better. It's just one of her moods."

She smiles at him for worrying, and then slips her fork into her mouth.

Teddy thinks it's great that she's so concerned.

.x.

He finds her at the beach in front of Shell Cottage, though the place isn't so much a cottage anymore as it is a good size house. She's got a pack of cigarettes in front of her and a glass bottle that glints half hidden beneath the sand.

The smoke ribbons up before disappearing into the air.

"What are you doing here?" she asks him, angry that he even dares to get into her personal space.

This hurts. He and Dom may have never been that close-he and Victoire and James were always too close for that, and Dom was wherever Rose was, always-but she always seemed happy to see him. She always talked to him like he was a human being, not dog crap on the bottom of her shoe.

"What year is the firewhiskey?" he shoots back.

She smiles, no teeth, and a thousand unsaid things are lying underneath. "Dunno. Lorcan got it for Xander and I to share." She really smiles then, her eyes a million miles away at the memories. "He took off the label. It might not even be proper firewhiskey. Moonshine, and all that."

"You're mad, drinking firewhiskey so close to your parents house," he tells her, because he doesn't know what to say. _You shouldn't be drinking and smoking_ seems idiotic, even in his head, because weren't he and Victoire doing the same thing at sixteen, and who is he to tell her what to do? _The Scamander boys are bad influences _would sound even worse, because everyone knows that Lysander and Dominique have been best friends for years, the only group in the Clan that is even closer than he and Victoire.

That's why it's so odd, to see her alone like this.

"Maybe I am." She shrugs one shoulder and takes another drag, the faint light at the end of the cigarette lighting up her face. "I don't care."

He sits down next to her and annoyance crosses her face, but she doesn't get up. The water comes up and grazes their feet before going out again. The two of them sit in silence for a while, the only sound coming from Dom as she takes another drag, her blankets clinking together as she moves.

Eventually, she takes a breath and speaks. He knew she would-Dom can be quiet when she wants to be, but eventually she has to break the silence.

"You know," she starts, her voice low and raspy, "it's actually really sad how the sea comes up the shore, only to be pushed away. She never stops trying, though. She always keeps coming back for more." Then she stands up, mashes out her latest cigarette in the sand, and digs the bottle further in so that it's covered completely.

He wonders if that's supposed to mean something.

.x.

"Dooooom," Victoire yells, her voice practically shaking the room. "Lunch is reaaaaady. You can't stay in your room _all _day!"

"Watch me!" comes the muffled reply, and then there's nothing at all.

Victoire shakes her head and smiles as she fixes Teddy's sandwich for lunch. "I swear, that girl never changes."

"I think she's changed, actually," Teddy says. "A lot."

Dom used to smile, she used to wear things except tight clothes and black and the stains of cigarettes on her fingers. Dom remembers the girl of yesteryear, and wonders what happened that caused her to change so much.

Victoire cocks her head, her eyebrows coming together in a look of perfect concern. Her face is so perfect that sometimes it seems unreal; it's always made it hard for Teddy to breathe. "I wouldn't worry about Dom," she breathes, smiling again but this time it seems more forced. "Something happened at Hogwarts, and none of us really know what. And she came back this way. Dad doesn't think that it'll last-and neither do I, really. You know how she gets."

And Teddy could see where she was coming from-Dom used to try to changer herself so often that sometimes it got dizzying. There were numbers and numbers of potions that were bought for Dom so that she could change her hair, her skin, her eyes.

Most faded, but Teddy doesn't think that this is just a potion. Whatever it is that Dom has, it isn't temporary. It's gone beyond the surface, seeped into the layers of herself that she rarely shared with Teddy.

He wonders why he seems to be the only one that's noticed.

"Your sandwich is done," Victoire tells him, declaring the conversation finished. With Victoire, it's always about the words that she isn't say. She just wants things to be perfect-her large family, her boyfriend, her _life_, and sometimes things just have to _seem _that way rather than have to _be _that way.

He reaches for his sandwich. "I don't think so!" Victoire says, her voice bright. She snatches it away before his fingers even meet the bread. "One snog is the price for this."

"Oh really?" Teddy asks, coming near enough to Victoire to make her back hit the counter. He brings his head low to hers. Their mouths are almost touching, but not quite. He can feel her breath against his face and can smell the flowers of her shampoo and perfume. "What if I can't pay this fee?"

"I think you can," she replies and stands up on her toes to meet his mouth with hers, reaching her arms up to meet behind his neck.

Teddy's caught up in the heat of Victoire's mouth, how soft her hair is in his hands, that he barely notices the rest of the world until a scathing noise breaks through.

Victoire breaks away, cheeks pink. He turns and sees Dom, fully dressed in those short as sin shorts that she was wearing the first day that he say her and a face full of scorn.

"I didn't know that I was coming downstairs to porn. I would have come down sooner if I had."

"Dom!" Victoire's voice is scandalized. "It wasn't _porn. _Merlin."

"Could have fooled me," Dom replies, shrugging and grabbing an apple out of the fridge. She takes a bite and then says, "I'm going. Xander and I have plans today," with a mouth full of apple.

"To do what, exactly?" Victoire asks, hands on her hips. "It doesn't escape me that you've changed." She glanced at Teddy as if to say, _See? I am doing something about this_, as if to placate him.

"Maman and Dad are on vacation, remember? Don't even try to be them. Even _you're _not that perfect."

.x.

She comes back that night, totally pissed.

Dom's giggling as she comes up the walk, and Victoire is furious, her whole face turns white in fury. Louis is laughing, but one look from Tori and he's headed up to his room. The Veela and Weasley temper don't come out in Victoire often, but when they do it's time to hit the road. Even Louis knows this.

"_DOMINIQUE GABRIELLE WEASLEY," _Victoire shouts, and it's amazing how much she looks like Molly Weasley when she does this. "_WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EVEN THINK YOU'RE DOING?_" Then she takes a deep breath and says in a more controlled tone, "Was Lysander with you?"

And that means that she was going to tell. Victoire was always the tattle tale-and evidently always will be.

Dom giggles, glancing up at her sister through her eyelashes as though she was flirting with her. "Of course not! He would _never _drink in _public _under_age_."

Victoire's eyes flash. "Oh, so _that _was where you were. Did you even _see _Lysander?"

"Of course I did, silly! You worry too much." Dom stands on her tiptoes, being shorter than Victoire only when Victoire's in heels and she's barefoot. She tries to hit her sister's cheek, misses, and somehow ends up on the ground laughing.

Victoire looks at her in disgust. "Teddy, will you please take care of her? I need to go write to Maman."

"You go do that! See if Dad cares. It's nothing more than a _phase _anyway," Dom calls out as Victoire's steps get farther and farther away.

"Can you even walk?" Teddy can't help but ask.

"No I absolutely cannot walk, Theodore. But I have somewhere that I want to go."

Teddy bends down to pick her up, and she's a solid, warm weight in his arms. "Where is it that you would like to go, Miss Weasley?"

"The beach! Please?"

"I don't really think that it's a good idea..."

"_Please_?" Dom looks like she's about to cry, eyes huge and watery, but Dom's always been good at making people feel guilty.

"I just don't think that was what Victoire wanted me to do when she told me to take care of you."

"She doesn't have to know! Besides, you know that she's probably in there writing a novel. And then she'll realize that her penmanship isn't perfect and she'll have to write it all over again."

He smiles because that does sound like Victoire. And because Dom has troubles with her p's, and saying all of those in a row makes her _sound _more like a drunk than she already looks.

"Do you really think that it's a good idea? I mean, you can barely walk."

"It's an _excellent _idea, Theodore," she presses. When he sighs and shakes his head, but starts walking to the beach anyway, she squeals and kisses his cheek the way she tried to kiss Victoire's.

Her kiss burns, and he can feel the sticky thickness of her lip gloss there, lingering on his skin. "Theodore you are the _best_."

"You know, you can't really call me Theodore if I can't call you Dominique."

"But that's totally different! No one has ever called you Theodore-you've always been Teddy. And you see, I was just being consistent. But right now I'm drunk, I most likely won't remember this in the morning, and so you sir are _Theodore. _Though you can continue calling me Miss Weasley tonight. I mean, the last guy that I was with didn't even know my real name." She pauses. "And he wanted to keep my underwear, which was weird, but whatever floats his boat."

Teddy isn't sure whether to feel disgusted or shocked or what, so he just settles with, "This is the most I've heard you talk this whole summer, you know. And I've been here every day."

She lays back on the sand, looking up at the stars as she says, "Well, I am drunk."

"I know, you've told me."

Dom turns to look at him then, hand on her cheek. "I've tried so hard to stay away from you, you know. It always hurt to be around you last year, and I'm so _tired_ of hurting. But I can't stop."

"You do know that I'm going to ask your sister to marry me, right?" Teddy asks, because he can't think of what else to say. He doesn't want to do this with Dom, and especially not this Dom, not the one with the black ringed eyes and alcohol breath that might just be telling him that she loved him, once.

She laughs then, but it sounds more bitter. More sober. "Good for you and good for her! It's not like no one was expecting it, or anything." She laughs again, this time softer, and reaches for Teddy's hand. He lets her take it, just this once, and her palm seems unnaturally warm next to his. He doesn't really know why.

"Do you think that the stars are people too?" Dom asks. "Do you think that they gaze at us the way that they gaze at them, full of wonder?"

"I don't know. When did you get so poetic?"

"There's a lot of time to think in detention," she tells him so solemnly that he can't help but laugh, because tonight he's seen more of who he thinks Dom is than he has this whole summer, and he likes this Dom. It seems like she's only comfortable on the beach, that this is where she's able to open herself up. Maybe he should take her here more often.

"Thank you," she says again, and she falls asleep holding his hand.

.x.

"Will you please go wake up Dom in her room?" Victoire asks, her voice pinched and he knows that she's still angry at her sister. And he should be too; she comes home at two in the morning drunk to the point of being able to walk, but he can't be mad at her. She's a mystery that he can't figure out now, and he likes that.

He goes up there, and knocks twice. _No one_ has been allowed up here this summer. Dom was never someone with an open door policy, but never has she been so strict about who is allowed in her room. When she doesn't answer he finds the door open so he lets himself inside, cringing when the door creaks.

The mess of blonde hair and blankets doesn't even move.

When he sees her wall he understands why she hadn't let anyone up here. They are covered, from the floor to the ceiling, with words or pictures. Some are written bigger than others, all in different handwriting, but they all have the tell tale loops of Dom's hand. The drawn pictures there are beautiful, all either of girls or men or animals and trees.

Some of the things that are there are like what she tells him on the beach, about the sea and the stars, but sometimes they're about other things. Some are angry, some are sad, and some are filled with so many exclamation points that they crowd the page.

"The hell," Dom mutters, and he realizes that she's awake.

"Here's some coffee," he offers, and she winces.

"For the love of Merlin's saggy left ballsack don't fucking _yell."_

He whispers. "Sorry." Things get quiet before he asks, "Who writes these things?"

"I do."

"And the drawings?"

"Lysander. He's amazing with a quill." Teddy steps closer to the wall and has to admit that she's right. He also notices that all the women have touches of Dom in them, when they aren't Dom herself. Her mouth, her eyes, her hair. She's there, somewhere, and it's amazing.

Lysander loves Dom. He wonders if she sees it.

"This is the best coffee in the history of coffee," Dom tells him, and he smiles and leaves her to it.

.x.

As though she knows about their last night-which isn't possible because she was so unbelievably wasted-she doesn't talk to him for the rest of the week.

And it bothers him, burrowing underneath his skin, because she's never been totally silent before. Sure it seems like his presence annoys her somehow, but they've had their moments. Even when she was sober.

"What's your problem?" he finally asks her, because he just can't take this anymore.

"It's you. It's always been you," she finally says, and her voice cracks. She runs after that, leaving him standing there so long that Victoire eventually asks him what's wrong and he can't tell her.

.x.

Dom has a quiet birthday, at home. "I think you've had enough of parties for this summer," Victoire says wryly, and she places an absolutely beautiful birthday cake on the table.

"Thank you," Dom says quietly, and she doesn't eat one bite.

That bothers Victoire, he knows, because she spent so much time trying to make this _perfect_. Eventually Victoire walks out.

And just like that Teddy can't take it anymore. It's been a fucking _month _since she's talked to him, and she's making her sister cry. _Dominique _has been selfish for long enough.

"How dare you. You know how much time she put into this!"

"I never asked her to. I don't care. I don't care about Victoire's perfect little world, and I don't want to be a part of it. I don't want to be a part of _this _anymore."

"Well too bad. You are."

He's furious, so furious, and she's barely even blinking. "Why the change, Dom? Why? What happened to the girl that you were before? You were _never _like this. I mean, has Rose even been over here _once_? But maybe she just wants to get away from you, Dom. Maybe she doesn't like you anymore, because dammit you make yourself fucking hard to love sometimes, you know that?"

"Do you really want to know why I 'changed'? Because I wanted to be as ugly on the outside as I am on the inside. And it's worked! It's finally worked. It even worked on you."

"It's worked on everyone, Dom. You aren't the girl I knew."  
>As he walks out of the room he hears her whisper, "Good," and pretends that he doesn't.<p>

.x.

He finds her smoking on the beach, and it's so much like the beginning of the summer that it hurts. Because somewhere along the way he found himself caring for her more than he should, and he can't do that to Victoire. So he's not going to.

He sits down next to her, and she nods.

"I thought about what you said," she starts after a silence. "And you were right. I'm awful."

"That you are."

She looks like she's going to smile there, but she doesn't. "But I want to get better, I think. Be the girl I used to be. You want to know why Rose never comes over here anymore? Because I slept with her boyfriend. We were drunk and stupid and I just wanted to try it. So I did, and things just became awful after that.

That's how things start, you know. One mistake and your whole life unravels. After that, after Rose stopped speaking to me, so did all of the friends that put up with me because of her. I've never been exactly nice, but I never thought that I was hated either."

Teddy doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything. Dom needs this, needs this badly, so he lets it happen.

"People started thinking that I was easy, and at first I tried. I really did try. But after a while I just stopped resisting it and became what they wanted me to become. No one really thought that I was a good girl, you know. They were all waiting on me to fall so that they could smash me when they did." She pauses, takes a drag. "After a while the only thing that I had left was Lysander. And I figured, what the fuck, if everyone thinks I'm a fuck up whore might as well look like one. So that's what I've become."

"You don't have to be what everyone else thinks you are."

Dom snorts at that. "Right. So I should just be like Victoire, and be perfect like people want her to be. Pass."

"Just be you," he tells her softly.

"I don't know who that is anymore."

.x.

When Teddy proposes to Victoire at the end of that summer at a party at the Weasley Grandparents, Dom smiles.

Teddy's surprised, after all of the summer being bitter about things, she finally seems better. Happier. She's arm in arm with Lysander, and he hopes that she finds happiness there.

He grabs her when he manages to find time away from the swarm of well wishers.

"Thank you, Dom, for being happy for us."

She smiles at him, and she still looks broken, but it's better. And he's glad.

"Call me Dominique," she says, and then goes off to find Lysander.

_**Fin.**_


End file.
